The Green Team from the Parker Middle School in Chelmsford “gets it.” They get that environmentalism is not something you leave to someone else. Environmentalism can mean making it easier for students and teachers in a school to recycle a can or piece of plastic. These Middle School students help connect the dots for others by showing the affect that recycling has on their school and town. The Chelmsford students and their advisors truly are heroes of the new environmental movement.

These students, along with many other local activists, were honored on Saturday, April 26th, with an award from the 3rd Middlesex Area Democrats. The 3rd Middlesex district includes the towns of Waltham, Bedford, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Concord, Lexington, Lincoln, Sudbury, and Weston, Massachusetts. The award recipients were commended for a taking action on the local level and for their work in bringing attention to the overall problems of global warming, energy usage and smart conservation of natural resources.

I got a chance to talk with two of the award recipients at the Brunch yesterday. Pam Rockwell has been working on environmental causes in Organization for the Assabet River, (OAR) an association of local citizens devoted to cleaning up and managing this beautiful and historic riverway.

Pam explained that the OAR, “uses science to encourage people to enforce the Clean Water Act. We’ve been working with waste water treatment plants and the EPA and the DEP Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection) to try and make them have permits that are more in line with the Clean Water Act so there is less phosphorous and less nutrients that are getting into the River.”

Part of the problem in enforcing the Clean Water Act is getting to a definition of what “clean” actually means. There are chemicals are in the River sediment from decades of past use combined with runoff from current waste water plants Pam went on to say, “The Army Corps of Engineers actually did a study, thanks to Senator Kerry and Senator Kennedy lobbying for some money for us to do that [monitoring], and there are numbers now about what should be going into the River and now it’s a matter of making sure that the permits agree with the numbers. That’s hard for people. That means people are going to have to upgrade their Waste Water Treatment plants.”

It is this kind of constant attention and push from informed local organizations that puts pressure on local, state and federal agencies to enforce the existing Clean Water Act provisions. Pam, and the other great folks who were feted yesterday, have a continuing commitment to making responsible parties listen to their concerns and take action.

I also spoke with Roger Shamel who, along with his wife Susan, received an award from the 3rd MAD district. The Shamels are co-founders of the Global Warming Education Network (GWEN), a group dedicated to helping people understand climate change and its affects. Roger talked about some local events he has staged to help bring people out to promote the issue of global warming.

“We held a rally in Concord last November 3rd, which Senator Kerry attended and we were very thrilled to have him there, in the rain. I remember he said, ‘I will never forget this day in Concord,’ but I am going to check with him today to make sure.” No one I spoke to forgot the turnout of activists and concerned citizens that attended that cold, wet but enthusiastic day last November.

Roger wanted to make the point that we need leadership in this country to get critical attention to stress how urgent the problem of global warming really is. Roger agrees with Bill McKibben, the founder of Step It Up 2007, who wrote, “If we’re going to make the kind of change we need in the short time left us, we need something that looks like the civil rights movement, and we need it now. Changing light bulbs just isn’t enough.”

Congratulations to recipients of the 3rd MAD awards. The citizens of Massachusetts and the country are better off for your hard work, your dedication and your tireless advocacy for environmental and energy issues. Thanks for being our everyday heroes and going the extra distance to making change happen.

3rd Middlesex Area Democrats Environmental Honorees:

Bedford: Roger and Susan Shamel, Global Warming Education Network
Carlisle: Robert Luoma, Carlisle Climate Action Network
Chelmsford: The Parker School Green Team, Peter Bruyn, Barbara Mayotte
Concord: Pam Rockwell, Citizen’s Research and Environmental Watch
Lexington: Stewart Kennedy, Lexington Conservation Commission
Lincoln: Elizabeth Cherbiack, Green Technology Committee
Sudbury: Bruce Langmuir, Sudbury Earth Decade Committee
Waltham: Marc Rudnick, Waltham Land Trust
Weston: Peter Haas, Catherine Laine, AIDG